OA's possible new notebook+gadgets: Have your say..

[Oleander Ardens]

I have a gaming laptop and the best advice I can give you is to buy a second battery, preferrably a 12 cell (Even if they only come with the 'lump' for your model). I see mentioned prominently in reviews of your machine that battery life is 'so-so' (PC World: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13...s/article.html) or 'short' which means gaming on 8 cell battery power is probably going to run you around 90 minutes at the most.

Thanks for that advice. I was thinking about a second battery, but an 8 cell one.

Also get an upgrade to that drive. 4200 rpm is simply not acceptable.

Is it hard to upgrade the drive? I confess that my knowledge of modding a notebook is limited. Does it conflict with the warranty?

And don't talk to me about heavy. I have the notorious (...ly unreliable and overweight) Alienware 7700 from 2+ years ago. A good gaming laptop is gonna be fairly heavy, just remember it's lighter than carrying your desktop rig.

I marched over a fair share of 4000+ m passes in the Himalaya with a 15-20kg ruck so I should be able to bring it to the Uni. But yes 3,00 is not much heavier that the lightest 14" ones (2,2 kg IIRC)

If possible I'd strongly recommend getting an up close and personal look at the display. What one person rates as acceptable for a gaming display another may find annoying to the point of unuseability. My AW 17" is, IMHO
, dark and ugly with poor options, but acceptable on performance grounds.

I will also buy a new 19" or 22" LCD screen for homegaming and surfing. Therefor it will have to take a closer look at the connections and capability of the GPU

UPDATE: The Toshiba 160GB runs at 5400rpm, unlike the 200GB one. Strange that they use the better T7500 Core 2 Duo with such a slow 2,5 hdd. Guess that most people just look at the space...

Thanks for your kind advice.